“Hey, you’re that Vivo guy,” were the words Sven Axelrad was greeted with in Cape Town last week. The author was having dinner in the city while promoting his latest book when a fan recognised him.

He said the familiarity of the greeting is reminiscent of his experience with his readers, explaining they all treat him like an old friend.

‘Dogs of Vivo’

Axelrad was in Cape Town to promote the Dogs of Vivo, his fourth book and the third to be set in the fictional town of Vivo, following Buried Treasure, his debut novel, and God’s Pocket.

All three of his previous novels, including Nicotine Gospel, the only book to be set in his hometown of Durban to date, were shortlisted for the Sunday Times fiction prize

Axelrad has complicated feelings about this years’ prize for which The Nicotine Gospel is still awaiting its fate.

“It’s almost like a recipe for heartache for me. I feel like I’m failing my driver’s licence for the third time or something but I’m very proud to make it. I really love The Nicotine Gospel and I would love for it to get some kind of badge next to its name.”

The Vivo vibe

All Axelrad’s books vibrate differently. This may be because of his writing method.

“I make music playlists. I spend the first couple of months making a playlist, and I build it to have the right mood for the book I’m trying to write.”

He then listens to only that playlist for the time it takes to write the novel. “No matter where I am, whether at work in the middle of a boardroom, if you put that music on my mind’s like a trained rat and I just go straight into the mood of the book. It’s the quickest way to get into the vibe.”

Beyond the playlist Axelrad starts each novel with little more than a handful of characters, a rough opening scene and a vague idea.

“If I know what’s going to happen I’m honestly bored.”

Most of his novels, which are philosophical literary fiction, peppered with puns and irony, have a suave, jazzy mood that veers into edgy horror, a label he emphatically resists.

“I wouldn’t call them horror by any stretch, but I do understand there’s a lot of darkness, metaphorical darkness,” explaining the darker parts are symbolic of the horrors of real life, such as depression, which the spooky shadow in Buried Treasure represents.

The publishing experience

Before Buried Treasure appeared on shelves in 2023, Axelrad spent 10 years trying to get published. Penguin eventually signed him with a three book deal and gave him his “first big break.” Last year, when his contract with Penguin ended he found the landscape very different.

“All of a sudden I had offers from different publishers!” Axelrad signed with Pan MacMillan in the end, a new development, after his agent negotiated for him.

“I’ve got a lot of respect and love for Penguin,” he said. “And Pan’s been absolutely lovely, so it’s cool. And I still keep in touch with my Penguin people as well.”

His agent has also secured American rights for Buried Treasure and God’s Pocket, while Nicotine Gospel has been sold to a US publisher and has a German translation in the pipeline.

“Next year I’ll have books out in two different regions,” he said.

Autobiographical

All his novels draw on his own life, Axelrad said. A note at the back of Nicotine Gospel reads: “None of this happened, but all of it is real.”

“The core emotions and happenings in the book are real,” he said, explaining that fiction allows writers to approach painful truths sideways. “If it was real I think you have a defence mechanism that doesn’t let you go back there. By giving an experience to a character you can often get closer to it than you ever could writing it straight.”

In Dogs of Vivo some of his own early adult life found its way onto the page. Axelrad worked in a bar at age 20, had a close group of friends, swam in pools at night, a recurring theme in the Vivo books, and nursed dreams of becoming a musician.

While these are experiences reminiscent of the lead character in The Dogs of Vivo including, in his own words, “loving stupidly with my whole heart, as if I had a dog’s heart in my chest,” the character in the novel that Axelrad resonates with most is the uncle figure.

“I don’t have any kids of my own, but I have a lot of nieces and nephews and I dedicated the novel to them. I really found myself in Uncle Ray, in the way he loved his nieces and nephews. He was a side character that surprised me.”

The ambiguous devil character also has a real-life counterpart.

“I met the devil as well when I was 20 years old, because he offered me a job in an audit firm, you know, and I took it.” Axelrad works as an accountant, his day job.

Upward trajectory

The auditing devil may have caused him to veer off his creative course for a bit, but since finding his way back he has released four books in four years and being published also gave his other creativity outlets, “doodling” and music, room for expression.

“For me it’s not just a novel; it’s a multimedia experience. While I was writing it I was writing music, I was drawing stuff, I was making things and I get to share the stuff I’ve been making.”

Doggy inspiration

A frequent feature of Axelrad’s social-media drawings and videos is his dog Zoe, who is also the inspiration for a doggy character, though not in the Dogs of Vivo.

“Zoe is blind now, and I feel as if I may write a blind dog into a story soon,” he said.

Another surprise of being published is the “community” he has found among his fellow authors.

“I’ve seldom met a writer who doesn’t want to chat, or isn’t complimentary, or helps you out when they can.”

Despite this Axelrad hasn’t shown his work-in-progress fifth novel to anyone yet, although he was comfortable saying it will be set in Durban.

“For this new one I’m sort of getting into it a little bit with the South African stuff. It’s probably the most South African book I’ve tried to write.”

South African stuff

This is full-circle from his first novel and the reason he invented Vivo, which is based on many places, including Durban, Cape Town, Johannesburg, Lisbon, Barcelona, Madrid and Havana as well as his deep love of Latin American fiction.

“I invented Vivo to remove that because if your characters don’t have South African specific names and aren’t necessarily in a South African city, then you don’t have to talk around all of the issues that we face daily.”

However, Axelrad feels this doesn’t make the characters’ experiences in Vivo remote.

“What’s not South African about loneliness and love and how to connect with people? That’s universal stuff but making Vivo, inventing this little town, has honestly been the creative joy of my life.”

And readers have resonated with it.

“With Buried Treasure a lady told me it was the first time she had laughed since her dad died!” He said his readers never connect with him as strangers. “It’s never in a remote-famous kind of way. It’s always in a very ‘we’re friends’ kind of way, and they give me a quick hug. For someone like me, who is quite a solitary person, it almost brings me to tears every time. It’s such a lovely thing.”

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